^^^^
Yeah, they have to move the money from one pocket to the other. ;-)

I have to agree with that. Except for a few independent stations, most broadcasters in Canada are owned by the BDU's, so the fight would be between themselves. The BDU's are greedy folks, so I'd doubt they would fight against putting those added advertisment profits into their own pockets.

Quote:

The cash flow from local advertisers is added directly to the bottom line,.. near pure profit.

As stampeder has mentioned earlier, there are already a few Canadian streams such as BC's Knowledge Network and Alberta's Access Network available for subchannels.

I don't see them as "available". It could be possible, but it would be up to the channel set themselves up and market themselves as sub-channels for other stations. The most I would see is them getting CRTC permission to be sub channels, and a variance of sub-channel rules to allow them to be such.

Introduction
1. Canadian television is in the process of converting its over-the-air transmitters from analog to digital. The transition to digital television (DTV) will provide significant benefits to Canadians. In addition to providing television viewers with better picture and sound, including high definition programming, and allowing for more services through multiplexing,1 it will make spectrum available for public safety uses and greater wireless competition and innovation through the repurposing of channels 52 to 69.

Footnotes
1 Multiplexing is the use of one digital transmitter by one or more broadcasters to transmit several programs at the same time.

I use a PCI card to capture a children program on Toronto CBC and WNED PBS stations. I noticed for the same 30 minute program, PBS only takes up 2.5GB of space while CBC takes up 4GB. That is a whole lot more data being transmitted by CBC.

I know both CBC and PBS are currently sending 1080i signal so resolution are the same. Both are sending 5.1 DD. So that leaves with higher bit rate for CBC. I can't really tell the difference in quality since it is an animation.

If CBC is sending a higher bit rate, they should have some room to give bandwidth to a sub channel, say TVO for SD programming.

If this is the case for other stations only with one primary channel, why not sell sub channels to smaller broadcaster?

Yep, that's a concept we've been discussing here for years and it was built in to the ATSC standard almost from the beginning. While your eye may not see the quality difference under your own circumstances, most people with high performance gear can easily see it. Please look through our existing threads on this topic.

This is what Harmonic, Linear and Travini have been working on at the California TV station. The technology for higher resolutions @ lower Mb/s is on the horizon. Their goal is to acheive 720p quality # 6 Mb/s or less. That would allow for up to three 720p streams within 19.4Mb/s. So far the California and Georgia stations are all using SD 480i. To carry 10 streams in HD they would have to somehow achieve at least 720p/or720i resolution at less than 2 Mb/s without creating the need for upgraded consumer equipment.

In my opinion, TVs over 42" screen size should not expect or not depend on OTA even at 1080p for fast moving/sports program quality. For 32" screen sizes or less, 480i to 720p should be pretty good quality for OTA viewers. Expecting any better quality will come through fibre optics with a monthly bill.

An obscure subchannel proposition, but NASA has a TV station, years back I saw it & it was mostly shots of the earth from orbiting shuttles. I really liked it, more of a "background ambience" kind of thing.

I don't see this happening just yet. The prevailing attitude from most Canadian broadcasters is to avoid the digital transition or shut down OTA wherever possible. Then, run to the CRTC in order suck BDU subscribers dry for every OTA signal and other useless channel broadcasters can think up. I can see many Canadians turning off BDUs en mass if it gets much worse. It's now cheaper to watch what little OTA is available and then rent or borrow premium content on DVD than to subscribe to a BDU. It will be a cold day in heck before Canadian broadcasters such as CTV and Global start giving away content on OTA subchannels that they can charge for on satellite and cable.

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